All eyes will be on the European Central Bank and the Bank of England which are both expected to cut rates. There will also be a busy calendar of corporate results releases, including Deutsche Telekom, Total, British Airways and Ryanair. (Oct 31)

Toyota dominates this week's earnings, which also include Lenovo, NTT, Hang Seng Bank and Mitsui. Australia may also deliver another rate cut. Michael Kitchen looks ahead to the week in Asia. (Oct. 31)

Matthew Robinson of Pacific Growth Securities says data-center companies are doing well; the problem with Cisco Systems, which reports earnings next week, is it does a lot of other things. Ben Pimentel reports. (Oct. 30)

Recent surveys in the lead up to the US election on November 4 suggest that 40% of voters, and 63% of African America voters, fear their ballots may not be counted. Millions of Americans are already heading to the polls to vote early, and some have already run into problems.

The fashion label, Pierre Cardin, showed its 2009 Spring/Summer collection in China's fashion capital, Shanghai Thursday as the city's Fashion Week got underway. The Pierre Cardin label is a house hold name throughout China and it held the country's first western fashion show back in 1978. The fashion house says this year's collection was inspired by the ocean and the Bubble Palace located outside of Cannes in southern France.

A US civics lesson in Kenya, where 14,000 high school students took part in a competition aimed at increasing their knowledge of the US electoral process. They wrote letters to American presidential candidates Democrat, Barack Obama and Republican, John McCain.

The Middle East has a lot riding on the result of next week's US election. Everyone is asking how much American policy is likely to change in the region, particularly in Iraq and regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?